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Saturday, 10 December 2016

Korea’s Park mistook democracy for monarchy (Sunday Guardian)

By M D Nalapat | Seoul She became aloof and disconnected from both the people and party rank and file.

Being in the capital of South Korea for a conference on
Korean Unification held in the National Assembly building was an
experience which showed how far this country, small in territory but
huge in economic success, has come in the maturity of its democracy.
More than two million citizens congregated around the National Assembly,
holding candles and singing songs, calling for President Park Geun-hye
to resign forthwith. Elected on 25 February 2013, Park is the eleventh
President of the Republic of Korea, and led her Saenuri Party to a
comfortable plurality in the National Assembly. However, a little over
three years later, the overwhelming majority of the population have had
enough of her, and have taken to the streets to nudge a reluctant
Parliament to remove her from office. Thus far, despite weeks of massive
agitations against Park, there has not been a single arrest by the many
police personnel placed around the National Assembly. The sympathies of
those in uniform were with the protestors. And within the crowds, there
was a festival atmosphere. Songs were sung, little children brought
along “to watch history being made”, and there is satisfaction that
Parliament—including the ruling party—will hold impeachment hearings.
Judging by the mood of the voters, most of whom had backed President
Park just three years ago, it seems clear that her days in office are
numbered. President Park’s fate is a cautionary tale for democratically
elected leaders everywhere of the speed with which public opinion can
change, and how pressure from large numbers of citizens could force
legislators to take action against an unpopular, albeit elected, leader.

What explains the collapse in the
political fortunes of the daughter of the dictator, who between 1963 and
1979 made South Korea a global powerhouse of enterprise? When President
Park Chung-hee’s wife died, it was only daughter Geun-hye who fulfilled
several of the roles of the First Lady. Perhaps the five years of
experience in the Blue House as the right hand of her autocratic father
gave the current President of South Korea a distorted picture of the
role of an elected leader.

After all, voters do not want to see
their elected leader morph into a monarch, ruling in a manner as
absolute as a dictator. In the case of President Park, there was
certainly the question of her ties to an intimate female friend and the
manner in which this individual used her sentimental hold over the
President to get monetary and other favours from big business interests.
However, this would not have gained the traction it did but for the
fact that Park Geun-hye began to behave much in the manner of her
father, who of course was a military dictator with zero popular mandate.
Those who know her say that she became aloof, so much so that she even
refused to have lunch with others while on tour, eating alone in her
room in the manner of a royal potentate. Park would fix appointments and
cancel them at the last minute, even while those who had come from long
distances to see her were kept waiting in the Blue House for hours.

The President apparently saw legislators
as lowlife, because she seldom found the time to meet them individually,
preferring to leave that task to subordinates. These were themselves
rude to both the public as well as to elected representatives, and
spurned any request with contempt. The consequence of such an attitude
is that several ruling party legislators joined with the Opposition to
ensure her impeachment.

Members of President Park’s party say
that soon after she took office nearly three years ago, the lady became
aloof and disconnected from both the people as well as the party rank
and file. She would meet only the seniormost leaders of the party, and
that too not for the purpose of getting their views, but to give orders
that she expected to be followed without question. Soon the ruling party
headquarters became a venue where the ordinary cadre was absent and
only those in big cars who were billionaires were welcomed. Geun-hye
Park lost all touch with the people of her country. She spent her time
mostly in the company of a few officials, who were too afraid to
challenge her and who nodded their heads at everything she said. Apart
from high officials, the only other regular visitors were big business
representatives. Several of them had been assisted early in their
careers by Park Geun-hye’s father, the late President Chung-hee Park,
and the new President treated them as her subordinates, ordering them to
appointment those she favoured and implement measures demanded by her
or her close friends. President Park even sought to silence dissent by
punitive measures against some individuals who disagreed with her. Laws
were tightened, especially concerning freedom of the internet, which
made South Korea a democracy where there were almost as many curbs on
the internet as in authoritarian states.

At the same time, those close to Park
were given privileged treatment, including admitting undeserving
children in universities and in companies. Such favouritism angered
young South Koreans and drove hundreds of thousands of them to the
streets of Seoul to demand the resignation of the President. Her own
team has been ineffective, largely because the President chose people
whom she liked rather than those who were competent in the tasks
assigned to them. She ensured a collection of favourites around her who
were incapable of functioning in a manner that gained the public trust.
The impending downfall of President Park has been caused by her
misinterpretation of the mandate of the people as a licence to rule as
she wished rather than the way people expected her to. She ought to have
chosen competent and honest people rather than vapid flatterers, and
should not have confined her contact to greedy individuals out to make
money through closeness to her. Park should have kept in daily touch
with the common people and with independent minds rather than only with
fawning officials and avaricious billionaires. The fate of Park Geun-hye
shows what happened when a democratically elected leader deluded
herself that she had been crowned an absolute monarch.

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About Prof. M. D. Nalapat

Prof. Madhav Das Nalapat (aka MD Nalapat or Monu Nalapat), holds the UNESCO Peace Chair and is Director of the Department of Geopolitics at Manipal Academy of Higher Education, India. The former Coordinating Editor of the Times of India, he writes extensively on security, policy and international affairs. Prof. Nalapat has no formal role in government, although he is said to influence policy at the highest levels. @MD_Nalapat

MD Nalapat's anthology 'Indutva' (1999)

In 1999, Har-Anand published Indutva an anthology of MD Nalapat's 1990s columns from the Times of India. The individual columns are posted here, in 1998 and 1999 of the blog archive, though the exact dates of publication are uncertain.